


Bricks and Mortar

by LostBerryQueen



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hardbroom Twins - Freeform, Hecate Hardbroom's backstory, Indigo Moon - Freeform, Joy Hardbroom's twin brother, Joy's twin brother - Freeform, Magical Bond, Spoilers, joy hecate hardbroom - Freeform, magical twin bond, the worst witch series 3 episode 7, tww s3e07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-29 10:12:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17806097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostBerryQueen/pseuds/LostBerryQueen
Summary: How the innocent days ended for Miss Hardbroom, and the long journey of two prisoners began...





	1. Chapter 1

The three teachers loomed over Joy Hardbroom, no doubt attempting to intimidate her. Joy Hardbroom gazed up at them defiantly, her arms crossed. She was trying to hold back the anger she felt bubbling up inside of her.

“Witches, do not belong with the nonmagicals. Just as crows do not belong with cows. You must learn to abide by the witches’ code. Your actions are completely disgraceful.”

Joy Hardbroom grit her teeth, holding back an insult.

“From this day forward, there will be no more leaving the grounds. _Ever._ If you wish to remain at Cackle’s Academy.”

“If I wish to remain at Cackle’s Academy?” Joy laughed. “I don’t want to be here. I never have! You witches don’t know anything, and yet you act like you can teach me. I’ve never wanted to be at this useless school, why do you think I left? The nonmagicals know how to really live well. Witches are just prejudice and—”

“Well, if that’s how you feel about it, I’m sure The Great Wizard would be keen to hear your thoughts. Of course, in that case, we would have to tell him that you found a nonmagical that can actually see you, an unfortunate glitch in our spells that I am sure he would like to deal with. I’m afraid your poor friend might not enjoy the way he wishes to deal with it.”

All the color drained from Joy’s face. Her arms uncrossed and fell limply at her sides. “No!” She looked down and played with her fingers. She could feel the enjoyment spreading across her teacher’s face without looking up.

The teacher bent down so that her face was inches away from Joy’s. When she spoke her breath was warm and Joy shivered. “Joy, we won’t have to tell The Great Wizard anything, as long as you do as we say. After all, a problem contained, is a problem solved. You cannot pose any significant danger to us if you are confined to the school.”

Joy glared at the teacher with such intensity that the teacher stepped back, surprise showing on her features before she covered it up with a smirk. “Okay,” Joy said. She felt tears springing to her eyes.

One of the teachers handed her a handkerchief and she wiped at her eyes, face burning.

“Now, now. Pull yourself together. It’s for the best.”

~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~

Joy sobbed into her pillow, hating herself and the world. She didn’t even get a chance to explain to Indigo what had happened. Now she would never see her friend again, and Indigo would feel so abandoned. She must hate her.

Joy saw the light flashing but could barely hear the gentle ringing that accompanied it over her tears. She picked up her mirror without bothering to wipe off her face.

“What!”

“Uhh!” Her twin brother made a face of mock disgust. “What happened to you my little Joybell? Not ringing so well today?”

“Shut up,” Joy said, smiling a little. Their magical twin bond allowed them to know whenever the other was especially upset or joyful, so her brother always mirrored her when she was crying.

“What did you do this time? Tell me you didn’t insult another teacher?”

“The teachers here are completely useless,” Joy said, glad for a familiar topic to take her mind off of her current situation. “Just last week, Maybelle got turned into a chair by Patty, and the teachers couldn’t figure out how to change her back, so _I_ had to do it of course. The incompetence at this academy is astounding!”

“It’s no better at my school,” her brother said. “But sometimes it’s okay to blend in a little, you know. But saving people from becoming furniture is always a nice thing to do.”

Joy shrugged. “It’s easy for you,” she said quietly, looking down. “You were always the better twin.”

There was silence between them and Joy could hear the water dripping down her wall from the leaky roof. Cackle’s was always in need of repairs, but just as one was made, something else broke, like the castle was determined to never be alright again—to never be as magnificent as it once was in its youth.

“Listen, I’m not the better twin. I’m the boring one.”

Joy began crying again. She was going to be boring now.

“Joy, what’s wrong?”

Joy continued to cry. “Oh, it’s awful! So awful it’s hard to speak about!”

Her brother waited patiently.

“It’s…they found out and…they said, I have to stay at the school, forever! That I can’t ever leave! Or else they’d tell The Great Wizard and someone I love,” Joy gasped, the word was so powerful. She sighed. “Someone I love will get hurt.”

“They can’t…no, they won’t, they wouldn’t! Joy! There must be a mistake! They were just trying to scare you!”

Joy shook her head. “The spell they cast was really powerful. All three of them. Even I can’t break it. I’ve tried.”

“It’s not permanent. I refuse to believe that. They really are just scaring you for no reason, and you can’t let them get to you! You have to start acting better Joy, following rules, soon they’ll see you’ve changed and—then they’ll take the spell off.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“They will. They can’t—they wouldn’t! Come on Joy, I know you hate it there, but there’s no way they would be this cruel.”

Joy sniffed and wiped at her face. “You’re right, you’re right you’re right. I was just…panicking! And now, I just feel so trapped here already! And it hasn’t even been one night!”  

Her brother looked at her with patience and determination. “Joy, all you’ve got to do is just stay calm. Find something you like about the place.”

“What’s there to like!”

“There’s got to be something.  There’s got to be loads of things.” Her brother thought for a moment. “How about this, just imagine that you’re showing the school to, you know, that person you love. They’ve never seen it before, and I bet they would be pretty amazed. What places would you want to show them, where would you go with them? Just imagine they’re with you, and time will fly by, and you’ll be out of there in no time!”

“You want me to have an imaginary friend?”

“No, because she’s real. I just want you to imagine that your real friend is there.”

Joy rolled her eyes. “It sounds ridiculous!”

“I know,” her brother shrugged. “but it’s all I’ve got. You’ve always been the useful one.”

Joy shook her head. “I wish you could be here. And we could play magical tag. I just feel so confined here. None of my friends would understand, and I can’t tell them what happened, of course.”

“Well, just be good, sis, and I’ll be with you before you know it.”

~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~J~H~

Joy felt as though her insides were being squeezed up her throat. She clutched her stomach, and found herself lying on the forest floor.

There was a zap of magic and Joy looked up, expecting to see Indigo looming over her. Instead she looked into the terrified eyes of her twin brother.

Her brother knelt beside her on the ground, and clutched her hand. “Joy, Joy what’s happening to us? I feel as though I’ve been ripped in two, almost as if, like I’m turning to—”

Joy wailed and turned her head. Her brother followed her gaze and his eyes found the statue. She didn’t need to use words, their magical connection was like a living being, binding them together and roaring with Joy’s pain.

 Her brother stumbled to his feet and ran to the statue. “What happened, what happened, Joy!” Her brother voiced her pain because it was his own now.

“She’s gone,” Joy choked out. “Gone!” her voice was magnified by her grief and seemed to echo throughout all of Cackle’s grounds, bouncing back off of the edges—the invisible walls that sealed its prisoner inside.

Her brother bowed his head, kneeling on the ground before the statue. Joy inched towards him like a bloodied soldier, making their last journey across the battlefield.

Joy took his hand, shaking. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry,” Her voice was soft. “You never deserved to have a twin like me. And now, look at what I’ve done! I can’t make it right, this can’t be made right!”

Her brother squeezed her hand. He wrapped an arm around her. “Joy—”

“Don’t call me that,” Joy pulled away as if she had been burned, her entire body seizing up. “I can still hear her, calling my name. It _hurts._ It hurts so much! I wish I could just tear my insides out and put them on the ground, it would hurt less!”

“I know,” her brother said. “I can feel it too. But it wasn’t your fault sis, you couldn’t have known…”

Joy could feel him reading her mind. They had always been able to share thoughts to a certain extent, but this time, she found that it was in her control in a way it had never been before. She seized her brother’s consciousness and pushed it away from her own. “Don’t!”

Her brother fell back. He had never been pushed out of his sister’s head before. They had never been able to control when they shared thoughts, it would just naturally happen, but he felt the push, and knew it was his sister.

“What are you doing? Please don’t, don’t leave me!”

“I can’t let you feel this too! It’s too much! You don’t deserve this!”

“No, I won’t, we can’t be alone, we have to work through this together like we always do! We’re meant to be together—Joy!”

Suddenly the clearing was empty of anything but Joy and a statue. Joy felt calm, as if her insides had been hallowed out. She reached out and touched the statue, willing it to melt back into Indigo. She closed her eyes and she could hear their laughter, feel their love like a warm fire starting up in a cold, damp hearth. Then the feeling and the memories extinguished. She reached out for her twin bond. It was gone. She couldn’t feel her brother anymore.

Joy used the statue to pull herself to her feet. She wrapped her arms around the stone, pressing her body to it tightly. “Well,” she breathed. “We’re both prisoners now.”


	2. The World is Just Illusion

Hecate lay on her back in the clearing, grass stretching out in every direction, as lost as someone free to choose any way they wished to turn. She stared up at the sky. Sometimes she swore that she could see a flicker of the magic border that kept her inside. In a few days, the clouds would be dotted with little witches flying back to the school. The thought of all of the noise and excitement and happiness filled Hecate with a familiar feeling of dread.

              Sometime near the middle of break, Hecate would long for the beginning of the new term. But whenever the new term drew near, she would wish for the weeks of solitude to stretch out into eternity.

              The smell of the forest—the way she could pick out every herb and rearrange them into potions in her mind—was peaceful in a detailed, comforting way. Lying here, she felt as much a part of the grounds as the cattails.

              She closed her eyes and breathed. Sights and smell slipped away from her, like memories fading into stone. She dug her fingers into the grass as the magic eased through her, and her body turned into a fallen tree. It only lasted a few moments, and Hecate exhaled, her form returning to a humanlike state on the ground, although not entirely so. She hadn’t looked entirely human since she had been a young girl.

              When she looked into a mirror, she saw the tortured lines etched into her face, like a raven who had lost some of her feathers and would forever have them plucked out in the same place, over and over again. Transforming into different animals was one of the ways she occupied herself over breaks. She loved flying in any form.

              Later today, she would mount her broomstick, and fly high above the castle. She would reach up, and feel the familiar barrier holding her inside. It was soft like water, but warm like sunlight. It felt almost like a skin, holding the organs of Cackle’s inside.

              There was a crunching sound and Hecate looked up, just in time to see a squirrel scamper away. Somehow, it reminded her of one of her students.

             “Mildred Hubble…” she said aloud.

            A name that inspired instant anxiety, and brought with it a feeling of impending doom. Hecate had berated herself continually over break, for her choice to pass the girl on her exams. Some natural feeling of optimism had stole her away from her senses last term, and she knew that she would pay the price for her lack of self-control soon. It seemed that disaster was approaching, and her awareness of this wasn’t enough to stop it.

           Mildred was just like how she had been. So much so that Hecate often found herself wondering if Mildred’s entire existence was some hallucination her guilt-ridden mind had conjured up to torture her with the past.

           She was still just so _weak._ Had she been stronger, Mildred would be safely back in the nonmagical world, where she belonged.

           She had never been able to successfully kill joy. No matter how many times she told herself that dreams were delusional, she found herself slipping away from practicality. She read The Witches’ Code everyday and yet she still felt tempted to break it. She longed to undue the curse placed on herself and the curse placed on Indigo. It took all of herself control not to.

          She had to remind herself again and again, how Indigo would destroy the school, how it was too dangerous. And yet, every day of term last year, she had been haunted by a joy-filled face, racing through the halls with one sock pulled higher than the other, messy braids swaying.

          On occasion she could have sworn that she could hear Indigo, calling out her name, voice filled with sadness and despair. _Joy._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I am in so much pain right now over Miss Hardbroom's backstory. I just want to jump into the story and ease her pain. I want her to feel joy, and freedom again. I suspect someday soon, she will.


End file.
